Web Journey » Achieving a Web Mind

6 Ways to Increase Productivity

David Smith — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:27:13 +0000

Today, David Smith from Invesp follows up on my Cutting Down on Wasted Internet Time post. Do you want to guest post?

I read “The 5 Biggest Time Wasters” written by Jake, and, I completely agree with him. When you are working full time online (or working from home), you don’t even realize how quickly time passes away while surfing or in doing other non-productive activities.

Every time you start doing something important, you get a new tweet or email about a link to a hot story, or suddenly your client IMs you with a problem or invites you for an online meeting.

At the end of the day, you won’t have anything productive under your belt.

That said, spending the whole day on your computer doesn’t mean that you are productive. Productivity is entirely different from busyness. It depends on the projects/assignments you have completed.

Jake mentioned some good tips in that article, and I’d like to add few more things to it. Use these tips to improve productivity, and to defeat information overload.

6 Easy Ways to Improve Productivity

1. Set a Daily Schedule

Set a daily schedule and follow it religiously. It is difficult to stick to it at the beginning, but soon you get used to it. Divide your tasks on the basis of their importance, and start with tasks with the highest priority.

You can also use applications like Google Calendar or even Microsoft Office programs like OneNote to manage your schedule.

2. Sign off from social networking accounts

Log off from all the social media applications like Twitter, Facebook, Skype etc. These applications act as the biggest distractions when you are doing something important.

If you use social networks for working, still try to limit your time on them. What you think is helping your website, may be wasting a lot of time.

3. Don’t Multi-Tasking

Avoid jumping from one task to another without completing the first task. I’ve seen lots of people who keep on jumping from one project to another. They end their day by wasting lot of time in organizing things, and with lots of incomplete projects.

If you’ve started something then don’t leave it without completing it. It will help you to save lots of your time you might have to spend in organizing things and in transition periods between projects.

4. Take Notes

If you are stuck on something and can’t find a way to proceed, take notes of the problem (so that you can think about it later) and move to the next task. Don’t waste your time thinking and panicking about problem.

Having said that, don't just keep switching projects when they get hard. Switching to another project is only a last resort once you have repeatedly tried to overcome the problem.

5. Tell Others Not to Disturb You

Time and again, I see that the people treat professionals who work from home as a free person. Generally, they think that if you are working from home you remain free most of the time, so they can contact you or ask you for your help any time of the day.

It’s better to make sure that your friends and family know when you are working, and that they do not disturb you then.

6. Online stopwatch

To make sure that you are devoting a pre-defined amount of time on each task, you can download or use a stopwatch in your browser.

This allows you to limit the time you spend on certain tasks and on the Internet and general. Stopwatches also allow you to take breaks from the Internet in general.

Are You Productive?

These are the six things which I do to make my day more productive. Want to add something else? What do you to to stay productive? Have these tips worked for you? Feel free to share it in the comments below

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Staying Motivated During Rainy Sundays

Jake O'Callaghan — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:00:55 +0000

Right now, the pouring rain has subsided to a drizzle, but the sun is still covered by black clouds. When I look outside my window, I usually see people talking and walking with their pets, but today the sidewalks are empty.

I feel lazy today.

No matter what I do to try to motivate myself I just can't seem to write a post. The only thing I want to do now is sleep.

I think, as I often do on these days, how easy it would be if I just quit. If I just lazed around like my peers, and life was a breeze, I would be happier right?

It's These Days That Show You What You Are Made Of

We all have these days. Days where we feel like everything we're doing on the web is pointless. We will never make money, we won't build a community, we might as well throw in the towel.

But then tomorrow comes, and you beat yourself up about now working. Now you are a day behind, and you are busy the entire day. Now your posts are rushed, now your design for that client won't arrive in time, and worst of all you have failed yourself.

But for those who push through when everything is going wrong (blind confidence helps), are the people who make it on the Internet, and in other areas of life. This brings to mind this saying:

If you don't do it now, you won't do it later.

Rainy Sundays are what really determine success, and are what lead to sunny Fridays.

How to Defeat Rainy Sundays

1. Write With Emotion

I find that when I don't feel motivated, writing about something that I really feel passionate about gives me a push to write.

This leads to some of my best work, and once I complete that article I feel like I can achieve anything.

2. Avoid Procrastination

When humans don't want to work they procrastinate. At first, I find yourself doing little projects that will "just take a minute", but before long, I have spent hours doing frivolous stuff. I also feel more drained so it is harder to get work done.

Don't let this happen to you! The two biggest ways us webmasters procrastinate are through wasting time and information overload.

- Avoid Information Overload and Wasting Time

Again and again webmasters fall back on these tactics of procrastination. For example, do you find yourself doing this instead of working:

Checking email
Checking statistics
Skimming articles
Instant messaging
Watching videos

These are all common ways that webmasters waste time. I recommend reading my article on cutting down on wasted Internet time to stop wasting time.

Information overload is very common among procrastinating webmasters. Basically, it's when we skim constant articles without getting any benefit. It's almost like a information panic attack. You should read up on information overload to prevent this from stealing your Sunday.

3. Reward Yourself

Giving yourself even a little reward (even something as small as a piece of chocolate) can be enough to motivate you to work. Force yourself to achieve your goal before you get your reward or this process is pointless.

4. Know That There's a Tomorrow

Do you want to work twice as hard tomorrow? Do you want to know that you took the easy way out? Do you want to wake up with a smile on your face? Ask yourself questions like these, and keep repeating them. They might be enough to help you break free and get some work done.

The most important question you should ask yourself is:

Do I want to do it now, or later?

The people who answer "now" and set to work are the people who are successful.

Oh Look, This Post Is Done

It took me a while, but I finally broke free of the Sunday rain. Once I started writing this post, all my laziness vanished, and the writing of it went by quickly.

Right now the rain is still drizzling, and the day hasn't changed, but I am a completely different person. Now I feel proud of myself for breaking free, and am even going to start another post.

I know that there will be many more days when I feel like quitting or that I don't want to write, but I know I can defeat them, and I know my battle will be worthwhile.

Even more important, I know that I will have many more sunny Fridays than rainy Sundays.

How Do You Overcome Tough Days?

We all have them, and everyone overcomes them in different ways. How do you overcome your rainy Sundays?

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Dealing With Information Overload

Jake O'Callaghan — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:00:09 +0000

Right now I am laying on half sitting, half lying on my couch (my preferred blogging area), and typing this article. My eyes are strained from staring at a computer screen for hours, my hair is a mess, and I still haven't taken a shower.

This is what information overload does to you.

I Have Been Reading and Skimming for Hours, But I haven't Learned Much of Anything

I have read blog after blog post, I have watched videos, listened to interviews, and even read eBooks, but I have accomplished nothing.

Sound familiar?

Many webmasters suffer from information overload, and don't even know it. We may even consider reading so much a job well done.

Lets take a minute to consider your goals on the web. Close your eyes and imagine yourself cashing that check, or getting that interview, or even becoming a millionaire.

Now open your eyes and ask yourself how to achieve that. Hopefully, you think of a plan that you have come up with. Now imagine yourself doing the actual work of the plan. What do you see?

Do you see yourself reading? No you see yourself writing, or designing, or promoting. You see yourself doing.

I am definitely a big fan of learning, and that's why I created this blog in the first place, but there is no need to learn unnecessarily. How is reading so much in so little time going to help you?

We all want to be successful on the web, and we all want to quit our day jobs. This motivation drives us to keep wanting to do more and learn more, but really it is just hurting us.

Think about those articles you have read. Have you really learned anything? Or is the information swirling around in your brain like a tornado.

And what is all this information for? You know as well as I that this information really is of little use. We are only accumulating because in our minds it will help use achieve our goals. It is almost like those reality shows that show people who can't get rid of anything. They keep the things because they want to hold on to something.

We need to stop holding on to this information, and get to work. We need to learn, but we need to do it in a healthy way.

Fighting Information Overload

Information gets to the best of use, but with effort you can fight it and jump-start your working efficiency. Think how much more time you will have when you don't waste so much of it!

1. Only Get Good Information

There are millions of articles out there, but you only want to read the best of the best. The best way to do this is to subscribe to blogs that produce great content.

Don't waste your time with decent content, there is much too many great pieces of content out there that you want to read.

I would also recommending un-subscribing from those pesky email subscriptions unless you are getting good content from them. Most of the time, they try to sell you something and you don't need that information.

Another good idea is to stop reading, watching, and listening to pointless content in all aspects of your life. That stuff clutters your mind, taking space away from important information.

2. Read an Article a day

An apple a day is good for you, but you wouldn't eat 10 apples in a day. The same thing applies to information.

Someone who is used to reading many articles a day may find this ridiculous, but think about it this way: an article a day is 365 articles a year. Now think if you read 5 articles a day: do you really think you can actually remember most of the information you accumulate from 1825 articles? How much do you really need.

If you must, you can increase the amount of articles you read, but apply the articles you read to your website before reading more.

3. Apply

Multiple times after reading I have thought "man that was a great article", but then did nothing with it. The article motivated me, and taught me, but I didn't gain anything from it.

After reading an article, apply its knowledge and you will benefit from it. If you faithfully do this for a few weeks, you will be AMAZED at the results.

4. Repeat

A few days after reading a good article, reread it. You may find some good tidbits of information that you discarded, and you will be able to evaluate if you applied the article well enough.

I often find that in the second read I learn more than the first read, probably because the "awe" factor is gone. I know what to expect from the article, so I can get right down to thinking about the information.

5. Filter Out Unneeded Information

Even in the best of content, there is information that is irrelevant to you. Ignore it and move on to more important information.

IMPORTANT: Read the Article, Don't Skim

it amazed me how many "skimmers" there are out there considering skimming really doesn't get much done. You need to read the full article to get the full knowledge, so skimming just doesn't make sense.

If the writer includes a bunch of pointless paragraphs, you really shouldn't be reading content from him/her in the first place. Great content shouldn't be skimmed, it should be read.

WARNING: Don't Surf the Web

"Surfing" the web is the number one reason for information overload. Millions or articles are at the tip of your fingertips, and being a enthusiastic webmaster, you need to read them all!

Like I said before, only read great content, and don't read too much. Surfing leads to a whole bunch of wasted time, pointless information, and a whole bunch of skimming. I know it's tempting, but don't click on that link.

Was This Just More Overload?

Or is this a worthwhile article? If so, why don't you subscribe to receive more great content. I would love to hear your feedback and strategies when dealing with information overload, so leave a comment below (or as I like to call them, words or wisdom).

Also, I recommend you read my article on cutting back on wasted time which ties into information overload.

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Cutting Down on Wasted Internet Time- The 5 Biggest Time Wasters and How You Can Beat Them

Jake O'Callaghan — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:00:36 +0000

I HATE wasting time. I have school-work to do, a novel to write, multiple websites and blogs to manage, and a whole host of other things going on already.

I don't have time to waste time, and I'm sure you don't either.

The Web is the king of time wasters, and it is so easy to get caught up in useless activities. Click a link, read an article, see another link, and check your stats. Before you know it 30 minutes are gone.

This is called surfing and its a huge time waster, and there are plenty of other ways to easily waste time. In fact, many people go on the Internet with the sole purpose of wasting time.

I knew I couldn't keep wasting time. It was seriously effecting the quality of my work, and my leisure time.

So I took a pledge to stop wasting time. What I learned in my journey, I will share with you in this article.

Top Time Wasters

Cut back on these, and you are well on your way to staying much more productive.

1. Statistics

Most of use Internet people are goal-oriented. We set goals, and we want to see tangible evidence that we are achieving these goals (or at least heading in the right direction).

It is no surprise then that many of us (me included) are statistics junkies. We check our Google adsense earnings hourly ("oh look I made 60 more cents"), we check Feedburner, we check our website statistics, and a million other things (affiliate program stats, ezinearticles, you get the picture). With so many statistics to check, these are a huge time waster.

The only way to break this habit is to force yourself to only check stats at certain times. The maximum I would check is once a day, and anything below that is great. For example, I check my stats once a week. It is painful for me, but it gives me a lot more time to work, and it is enjoyable seeing the fruits of my labor at the end of the week.

2. Email

Checking email is important considering it is a webmaster's primary form of communication, but many people waste way too much time checking it.

Think about the email you receive. Some of it is from readers, guest posters, and bloggers (important stuff), some of it is spam, and some of it are emails you subscribed to.

What I did was unsubscribe to email lists that weren't giving me high quality content on a regular basis. This stuff clutters your email box, making it harder to find the good stuff, and reading it is often a waste of time (they just try to sell you stuff a lot of the time).

I also installed a spam filter (I paid for it monthly) for my email address. This killed the spam that was overrunning my email address, causing annoying, time wasting distractions.

What's left in my email are the good stuff: valuable content, emails from other bloggers, and email from my readers. Now its easy to check my email, and quickly respond to emails.

Only check your email daily or a maximum of twice daily if you really get a ton of email you need to respond to.

3. Web Surfing

This is perhaps the biggest, and hardest to prevent time waster. It is as easy as clicking on a link which leads to another link and another and so on.

Even the best of us do this occasionally, but I find that it can be mostly preventable if you really watch yourself.

Keep yourself in a controlled environment (like in your admin area), and only have one tab open. Think before you click on links. Will clicking really help you accomplish your goals? Will it help you create better content or get more readers? If not, focus on the important thing: work.

4. Information Overload

Reading and learning new information is good, but less time spent on reading will allow you to actually apply what you have learned instead of doing nothing.

When you read and read till your brain is about to burst, and your eyes are strained from your computer screen, you are suffering from information overload.

Information overload is a complete waste of time because if you just read an article and applied it instead of reading more and more, you would accomplish much more. Instead, you have just wasted time.

5. Constant Design Tweaking

Tweaking a design is often necessary, but sometimes changes are pointless and time consuming. I am not against tweaking by any means because it helps you create a better design, learn to design better, and create a better user experience, but constant tweaking is not necessary.

Really, does it matter to your visitors if that has a 10px padding or 8px padding? No, readers come to a website for content, and the point of a design is to display that content in a logical way. Designs don't have to be perfect, and tweaking can make designs worse.

Being a left-handed perfectionist, I know how hard it is to prevent tweaking. I often think: "oh this will be a quick fix" and end up wasting 20 minutes on one tiny aspect of my design.

The cure is to set an amount of "tweaking time" and stick to it. You will find that you can make good changes to your design, and your tweaking doesn't get in the way of building traffic, marketing, and most importantly creating content.

What's Your Biggest Time Waster?

Fight these common time wasters, and you will get much more done, and working will be a more enjoyable experience.

Work on improving slowly, and know that you may relapse into old habits. Remember, that you are doing yourself a great favor, and you will even make more money!

I know that there are some things I left out here, but these are just some of my biggest time wasters. I would love for you to post a comment talking about how you overcame your time wasting habits.

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The Worst Post Ever

Jake O'Callaghan — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 13:00:02 +0000

This may be the worst post ever but I posted it. This may be the worst post ever, but my readers didn’t all unsubscribe, I didn’t lose all my traffic, and I didn’t lose money.

Yes this may be the worst post ever, but it is posted. I am done with it; I never have to post it again.

This may be the worst post ever, but the stress is gone. I can move on to the next post, and then the next. And sense this is the worst post ever, I need not worry about posting the next one.I can’t stoop any lower can I?

This may be the worst post ever, but I finished it. I edited it, I added a picture, and I made it the best that I could.

Yes, this may be the worst post ever, but I did post it. I didn’t stress out because it isn’t good enough, because it is an insult, a disgrace. I didn’t get halfway through the post and stop writing because it wasn’t good enough.

I posted it, and that is all I can do, and now I can move onto the next, and then the next; because in blogging there are not just second-chances there are infinite chances; there is always another post; no one can stop you from posting.

And besides, sometimes a post that you think is okay could become your most popular; it’s happened to me before. So maybe this isn’t the worst post ever, maybe it’s the best post ever.

Yet, it does not matter because I tried my hardest and I published it, and that is all I can do.

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The Art of Blind Confidence: The Skill Everyone Needs For Success

Jake O'Callaghan — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:00:40 +0000

A sane person never succeeds for the goal seems impossible; it is the person that never doubts his success that will ultimately achieve; it is he who conquers the impossible.

This principal applies greatly to the web because to all beginners (myself included) making it on the web seems impossible. Many people think that the entire principle of making money online is a scam; Bloggers blog for months without seeing a dollar profit. I personally have been told that I need to think about getting a real job, not a fantasy one.

The Web is a vast and complicated place, a place that can take years of hard work before you can see a decent profit. Yet, the profits do happen, and when all the quiters have quit and the serious people have worked hard, the money comes (and sometimes in great quantities).

The benefits of becoming a webmaster sound great, but to most they are unachievable. Most people end up quitting after a few months when they only pocket a few dollars from all their hard work. Most end up quitting when after 100 posts there subscriber count still remains low. Most end up quitting when they realize that they are receiving less than 100 visitors a day. Yes, the web world is a challenging place.

That’s where blind confidence comes in, the ability to ignore all the statistics, and all the results that constantly persuade you to quit. Ignore everything and just focus on working hard and doing the best you can. Success will come for those who persevere.

Every blog that has been around for more than three years is at the top of it’s class. Have you ever seen an old blog that has a low subscriber count or that barely gets any comments? If you do find one than the blogger didn’t provide good content and didn’t promote nearly enough.

The thing with the web is: low traffic, low traffic, low traffic, spike. It is when you spike that the traffic and the money comes, and with hard work the spike will come. Think of Squidoo: after years or providing a good service and good content, their traffic spiked 90 percent in one year!

Persevering through all the odds will bring you success. Don’t let anything get you down; act like you are just making your blog or website for your own eyes. Keep working hard, and you will see the gold at the end of the rainbow.

A Warning

Though blind confidence is great, arrogance is definitely not. If you need to make changes to your blog, don’t think "Everything I do it right" and miss out on making your blog or website better. You want blind confidence to motivate you to persevere, not hinder the performance of your blog or website.

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Content is King, Links Are Prince (Still)

Jake O'Callaghan — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:36:50 +0000

Recently, I have read a few articles that state that links are more important than great content. An example would be Deneil Merritt’s great article that got me thinking about this in the first place.

Though I completely respect his opinion (and others who share it) I have to disagree.

Links may be prince, but content is still king and will always be king.

Content is what keeps visitors coming back, it is what builds reputations, it is what ultimately leads to money. Not to mention, good content helps build links. It is pretty hard to get many quality links with crappy content.

Building links will allow you to get to the top of the SERPs (search engine ranking position) with good on-page optimization. However, the reader will not stay long without good content.

Obviously, people who just focus on links want to get a quick ad click from the visitor. To me, this is stupid. Using this policy will just cost you money in the end. Not to mention, you lose out on many other great features that great content provides.

The main reasons that people say that links are more important than content, is they are pissed. I know I am mad sometimes when my quality article is topped by an article in the SERPs that seems like it is written by a 11 year old. These articles are bombarded by keywords and repeat the same idea over and over.

Search engines are not powerful enough in this day and age to tell if an article is good.That’s why they rely on links that humans create to show if the page is important or not. Your article will eventually rank higher than theirs. Trust me. It’s not like they can build a bazillion links with crappy content. Their hard work can only do so much. If you link build and get natural links you will own them in the SERPs. They can only link build. You can link build and get natural links.

Besides, since when does traffic have to all come from search engines? I am getting a decent amount of traffic, and I am not ranked in the search engines for any good keyword. (Yet) If you look at Problogger, he barely has any traffic from search engines. He is around 3000 in Alexa, and only 14 percent of his traffic is from search engines.

This means, if you have good content and decent promotional methods you will get traffic.

Oh, and Problogger has links, lots of links. You know, natural links to his content because it is good.

I really can see why people would think of links and SEO as king, but it’s really not true.

So for all you bloggers/webmasters out there, keep writing that great content. Producing crappy content may get you a few Google Adwords clicks (if you can actually get ranked high in the search engines) but it is no way to make a serious income or build traffic.

One more thing: Search engines are getting better and better at recognizing great content. It is only a matter of time before the bad content is dragged to the bottom of the search results.

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40 Common Negative Webmaster Thoughts

Jake O'Callaghan — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:54:37 +0000

Lets face it, whatever you do on the web is tough. Whether you need to do it for a living or you really want to be heard. I know personally many of the negative thoughts that go through our head because they have and still do.

Have you asked thought about these statements when you feel hopeless? Have anything here happened to you?

Negative Thoughts

No one comments.
No one reads my articles/posts.
This is taking to much time.
I'm not making any money.
No one is posting( forums).
My site is running too slow.
No one likes my design.
My competitors sites are better.
No one is buying my product.
I can't be succesful without paying a lot of money.
My SEO skills suck.
Google will never love me.
No one is linking to me.
My Pr is 0. No one will give me a link exchange.
I'm running out of idea for posts.
I can't get the site to work properly.
My host is bad.
Everything I said has been said before.
No one is following me on Twitter.
My writing isn't interesting.
I shouldn't have invested my money in this.
Google banned me forever.
I'm bored.
Everyone hates my writing.
I can't do anything right.
My domain will never be worth anything.
I'm alone, but every other site has many people running it.
My site is down, and I can't get it up.
My name/domain isn't memorable.
My work is underapreciated.
I can't make a living off of this.
Posting every day is killing me.
I can't take this anymore.
There's too many other web designers out there. What makes me special?
I need a logo, but can't afford to buy one.
No one is digging my site.
No one related to my niche/subject knows who I am or about my site.
I'm not qualified enough.
My site subject is bad.
I don't know enough about my subject/niche.

Now that you got those out, you can move on to positive thinking. I will post more on that and other ways to motivate yourself in opcoming posts. Please comment if you have anything to add.

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